They play games for 10 hours - and earn £2.80 in a 'virtual sweatshop'

Bogdan Ghirda is paid £70 a month to do what most bosses would fire him for. From the moment he arrives at work he plays computer games on the internet.

With only a few short breaks Ghirda, 20, goes on playing furiously for 10 hours in the backroom of a run-down apartment block in Caracal, Romania. The moment he leaves his desk a member of an evening shift takes over the computer and continues the same game with equal determination.

Between them, the company's 11 employees keep a dozen or so computers running 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Although Ghirda works in Romania, the computers and the internet connection he uses are paid for by a company in northern California. Gamersloot.net is one of a growing number of firms taking advantage of a boom in online computer games by opening 'virtual sweatshops', using the low pay in poor countries to provide services for wealthy western players.

Older computer games pit a single player against computerised opponents, but the new ones allow players to join forces with others anywhere in the world. There are now an estimated 350 such games, the most popular of which have more than 300,000 subscribers, each paying a monthly fee to keep their place.

'Depending on how you define "sweatshop", I guess we qualify,' says Patrick Bernard, head of Gamersloot.net. 'If you mean exploiting helpless people and making them work 15 plus hours a day at repetitive tasks that they hate in appalling work conditions, that's not us.

'If you mean employing people that don't mind "playing" a computer game for eight to 10 hours a day at a wage that would starve a UK resident but it is a decent salary for an employed university graduate in their country then yeah, that's us.

'One of the things that gets me up in the morning is knowing that the people in Romania are making a decent living out of what I'm doing, and that without it some of them might have turned bad. I feel very good about that. It's a decent job, not a career perhaps, but there are far worse things they could be doing.'

When The Observer arrived in Caracal, a bleak-looking town of 33,000 inhabitants three hours from the capital, Bucharest, the local internet connection had failed and the staff were sitting around with nothing to do. For Ghirda, who joined the company a year ago, the job compares favourably with his previous one in a local club.

'I'd never played any kind of computer game before I started here,' he said. 'I was working as a barman when I saw a commercial on television asking for people who spoke a little English and liked to play games to apply for a job.

'The money I make here [equal to just 28 pence per hour] is around the same that I made in the bar but this is much better.'

The television commercial was placed by his 26-year-old boss, Adrian, whose apartment is the base for the operation. 'Caracal is a dead town, a ghost city,' Adrian said. 'There is no industry and many of the factories are closed. People are desperate for work.

'When I bought the advertisement I got a huge response. Lots of women in their forties and fifties were so desperate for work that they applied for the job too.'

The games are highly addictive - the average player spends 22 hours per week online - and Adrian acknowledges that this can work to his advantage. 'Quite often at the end of the shift I have to tell people to go because they want to carry on playing. Sometimes they come in on their days off and play the game some more.'

An hour later the internet connection is back and the day's work begins. Ten computers are switched on and Ghirda and two young colleagues on the day shift assume the parts of numerous characters, and begin fighting huge groups of virtual 'bad guys'.

Their skills are so finely honed that they easily win every battle, earning valuable experience points which can then be passed on to other players.

The most valuable commodity in all such games is time, and this has spawned the rise of the virtual sweatshops. Every new player starts at the bottom with little virtual money and few skills. Moving up to the next level of the game involves carrying out dull, repetitive tasks such as killing thousands of virtual monsters.

But thanks to companies such as Gamersloot.net, new players now have an alternative. They simply pay someone else to do the dull repetitive work, and buy a ready-made character at a more advanced level.

Getting to the highest level in some games takes months and for players working alone is almost impossible to achieve. Gamersloot.net offers to promote your character in a matter of days for a fee of around £250.

Other companies - most of them based in Russia and Asia - concentrate on 'farming' virtual currency which is then exchanged over the internet for the real thing. Last week 10 million Adena, the currency from a game called Lineage, was retailing for around around £55. Up to 200 gold pieces, the currency from Everquest, could be bought for £45.

The virtual sweatshops represent only a small part of the overall market in virtual goods. The auction website eBay is selling everything from virtual daggers and magic potions to high-level Elves and Jedi Knights for up to £800, in a market worth more than £500m.

THE TOP GAMES

Everquest

Players meet in a medieval virtual world called Norrath. There they pick a character to play, such as a warrior, a blacksmith or a healer, and then band together to slay magical beasts. Completing such quests earns the players virtual currency which can be used to buy better weapons or other equipment. It can also be used to purchase houses. Everquest is said to be so addictive it is often referred to as Evercrack.

World of Warcraft

Warcraft has proved so popular with more than 400,000 subscribers in its first six months that the manufacturers have stopped providing new copies. Revolving around a battle between Orcs and humans, players create characters which they take through a fantasy world, learning magic and mastering weapons to vanquish foes. Players can fight against computer-generated characters or against other players.

Eve Online

This game takes place in space. A player starts off as the captain of a small mining vessel but can progress to become the head of a mighty corporation, a trader or a mercenary. Some players decide to become pirates and spend their time flying around attacking other players. Unlike normal computer games that stop when you switch off, these continue in your absence. One reason they are so addictive is that players are afraid of what they might miss if they leave the game.